That Marsden chick is nuts. I went to high school with her, and I was attending university at SFU at the same time her 'sex harrassment scandal' and got to see that unfold up close. We weren't in the same circle, but . "Nuts" doesn't really begin to cover it. Vindictive, manipulative, self-centered, detached from reality, borderline sociopathic... I could go on.
I hadn't realized she'd become something of a minor celebrity since then. I'd had her pegged as ending up a bitter cat-person writing angry columns. I guess she managed to make a career out of that. Wikipedia mentions she ended up with Bill O'Reilly on Fox for a number of years... Figures. Crazy attracts crazy. And even THEY fired her.
If Jimmy Wales was keeping company with her... well... no wonder the breakup was bizarre enough to become newsworthy. As to charges of corruption... well.. you can learn something about a person by the company they keep. My assessment of Wales credibility is pretty low right now.
Any other opinions on managed code out there? Preferably from people who have actually used it?
Managed is like Java, only with more language syntax options, because it supports multiple languages.
Your "microsoft employed friend" sounds like he's just been taken out of context. After all sure there are places where managed or java doesn't belong, and sure its possible MS tried to use it in places they shouldn't have, and that would be a 'Mistake'.
But hanging onto managed for 'VBers' is just absurd. Java is -very- enterprise and 'big development places' friendly, and so is managed code. I'm not sure why anyone would claim otherwise.
Not only did he invoke one of the slashdot holy wars to complete his trifecta, but managed to quietly work in an IP controversy by referencing scrabble/scrabulous which itself is just the result of the buzz surrounding an app on a social networking site like facebook/myspace thereby completing a circular reference and ending up exactly where we started.
At the very least he should get 50 bonus points for using all his letters!:)
It's almost like we're kind of pissed at the Castro family for encouraging the Soviet Union to launch those nuclear missiles he had on his island.
Yes, its almost like we're immature children who spitefully cling to their hatred long after the conflict is over and everyone else has grown up and gotten over it.
Hell, we've even made peace with the country that actually designed, built, and deployed the missles to cuba. You know, the country that actually owned them and put them their with the express purpose of creating a threat? The country that the 'cold war' was actually with? We made peace with them. But apparently our rage for a dying old man whose island they were on... for him... our hatred is boundless.
Grow up aready.
Yes, -1 Not conforming with majority opinion
No. -1 for being an immature and childish country.
You know, because of that whole trying to murder tens of millions of us and all.
You might want to check your history. The Soviets put missiles in Cuba in response to the fact that the USA put missiles in Turkey. Not that it stops their of course, the cold war was a series of moves and responses, but the point remains... Castro was a PAWN in a much bigger game of chess [er... global thermonuclear war] and his role and personal relevance was laughably minor.
Eventually, nanobots will be everywhere, including inside your own body scanning your thoughts - thoughts which by then will already be pugged directly into the Internet or whatever its future incarnation happens to be called.
My nanobots will be defending my thoughts from outside bots, and manufacturing records of thoughts you didn't even have to feed into the internet to later convict you with.
There will also be no crime (without getting caught), no criminal trials, or even any lying without getting caught for ordinary people.
Smug self assurance and 100% reliance on the infallibility of technology. Sounds like a criminals/hackers utopia actually.
As you clearly couldnt be botherd to check if your point has been made already, it has. The point of the article is that AFAIK microsoft have provided no way to avoid compromise, but unix systems can be secured
So, going into device manager, locating the firewire port, and disabling it, doesn't actually work in windows?
Disable the port when you aren't using it, enable it when you are. You don't even need to reboot in modern releases of windows.
Yeah, and oxygen is what leads to old age and ultimately 'so called' natural death. So breath less. Breath slower. You only have so many. Make them last.;)
Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.
Yeah, lets all bow down at the alter of google. They'll just force us to view ads while data mining our conversations and text messages. I'd sure like to get in on that.
Seriously who needs a VGA, [...] port on their laptop nowadays?
Most people?
Connecting to large screens or projectors is a pretty common use for laptops.
Sure from a technical standpoint, I'd prefer DVI, with adapters to VGA, but VGA is probably more convenient. Most projectors I encounter are still VGA, as are a lot of budget screens, and the expensive ones at least support VGA too.
So for an ultra portable do I want the technically better DVI and the hassle of adapters everywhere I go... or just put up with the the lower quality of VGA but at least it works everywehre without carrying additional bits everywhere I go?
Yes, but special purpose hardware is presumed to be more efficient a given task than a general purpose CPU, and being more efficient means bringing the amount of power to get it done down.
2002 called and wants its windows gripes back. There are plenty of fresh gripes if you want them.;)
In vista the recycling bin along with the other 'special desktop icons' is a simple checkbox in the 'Change Desktop Icons' task in the 'Personalize' control panel.
Part of it is that the vast majority of software that seems like it requires admin access can be trivially fixed with an hour of sleuthing with ProcessMonitor/Regmon/Filemon and some group policy registry or ntfs acl changes. Some that use low level drive software for their normal processing this wont work for. But it will for most. Thats how we've always dealt with it over the years.
Agreed. But...
a) that's a lot of work, especially if the applications are updated frequently, and each new release seems to creates a new registry key where it really shouldn't be. Plus a number of badly written applications essentially reinstall themselves each time they are run which is particularly annoying.
b) that's way out of reach for home users.
With Vista out, going forward IT shops are spared this ordeal, and home users can reap the security benefits of being able to run as as regular user (and indeed being setup that way out of the box without taking extra effort).
All that being said, I really do like Vista and its UAC. It's not as elegantly done as sudo and the gui equivalent in the unices and osx, but its soooooo much better than XP was, that I find it a breath of fresh air.
Agreed. There are a few issues with UAC, but you can work around them... modifying config files in the program files or windows directory is annoying; it would be nice to just have to escalate once. And going into device manager shouldn't require escalation if you just need 'read only' access. But those are relatively minor issues.
Bill Gates better get a new titanium ring. All the ring kissing required to run your Apps on Windows is going to require a durable one on his finger.... Please, oh please, Mr. Bill, can I run ** on my computer???
Huh? What are you on about? Re-read my post. A couple times.
The owner of the computer would ALWAYS be able to sign, *any* application regardless of source, and it would run on any computer that trusted the owners key. (ie the PCs the owner owner owned. The owner would also be able to add *any* key he likes, so if you trust the applications I write, you can add my key to your computers. "Mr Bill" wouldn't be able to stop you from running jack squat under the regime I'm proposing.
The whole windows update key distribution idea is just a convenience so that most users don't have to mess with keys to download legitimate apps. It doesn't have to be microsoft update, there could even be third party key repositories, and if you assign trust to them, you get access to all the apps they've signed without messing with individual keys for each application or vendor. e.g. Sun or the Mozilla foundation or whatever could run their own key servers, and FOSS could register with them instead of microsoft if they wanted. End users could take the single step of adding trust to that keyserver.
You could even sign windows yourself, and then revoke the microsoft key on your own systems, thereby removing trust for microsoft. Your PC then wouldn't even run additional Microsoft software unless you signed off on it. So not only could "Mr. Bill" not prevent you from running whatever you want, but he couldn't even force your PC to trust software you didn't want it to trust.
Product Activation extended beyond the core OS and into each App as it is installed.
This isn't product "activation" at all. Its the complete opposite. You aren't entering a key so that the vender will allow their software to run on your computer. You'd be entering a key to PERMIT the venders software to run on YOUR computer. You can trust just the one application, or trust the vender, or trust a keyserver the vender is registered with, depending on how security you want, and/or how fine a control over what might run on your pc you want.
We're already there. And have been with XP for years. All it takes is: the systems are patched promptly, the users run as non-admin, and dont use IE.
Which is unrealistic given how much software out there REQUIRES you to run as an admin. Sure a fairly wide range of business/enterprise applications will work like this. But a giant shit-ton of software still remains that won't run in user-space... from many games, to software for moving phonebooks between different brand cellphones and doing firmware updates, to a camcorder utility, to a consumer accounting package, etc, etc.
How does one manage to run as non-admin if the software you need to run requires admin, and the venders are largely unmotivated to fix it since it isn't stuff that gets run on terminal servers or deployed in enterprise networks so there isn't a huge push to make it work in userland?
Vista forces the issue. Vista is more secure by default. Going forward venders won't realease much new software that's going to needlessly require admin access given that all customers will now find it a royal hassle to use.
Sure we have been able to run as a non-admin user for years, as long we didn't do much with our computers. Vista's forcing us into user land holds the promise that maybe we'll finally be able to run as non-admins AND use our camcorder software, do our accounting, etc, etc, etc.
Enough of that. Apple just doesn't make applications very well. They put all the resources into the UI, and skimp on the important stuff.
I can fix an application that runs slow and uses lots of ram with ram and cpu upgrades. I'm generally stuck with the UI though, so please, focus your resources there. It really is more important than you seem to think.
However, most people in this thread seem to be overlooking that the weakest link in computer security is not in hardware or software, but bioware. (The idiot sitting at the keyboard.)
Not overlooking it. Ignoring it because there isn't any disagreement on that point.
And now the Vista is out, I can only *hope* that dumb users is Vista's biggest source of security problems. Because if Vista can get good enough that self-replicating viruses, malware, and root kits, can only be installed / propogated by affirmative user action then its about as good as OSX or Linux, and that would be excellent progress.
And at the end of the day, there is -nothing- anyone can do to stop users from running something they shouldn't on their own computers except for "trusted computing", with 'trusted vendors' signing the packages the users are allowed to run. (And even that won't be 100% safe as the keys can be broken...) And we all know how popular Trusted Computing is around here.
That said, personally I LOVE the promise of trusted computing. But I want my own signing key, and to be able to add my signing key as trusted on machines I admin, and remove keys i don't trust even if they are from "reputable" venders. ie... the owner of the computer still has final say on what runs or doesn't run. Of course this undermines what the RIAA/MPAA wants 'trusted computing' and signing keys for, but that's a separate issue.
Joe six-pack can let microsoft update manage his keys, and for the most part, do alright, with more security than he has now. While the power users like me can still use TC to do whatever we want with our computers, and up the level of security considerably at the same time. If a user tries to install malware on my machine they can't, unless I sign it, or its signed by someone/company I trust.
Of course, signing an application and/or adding a key should be just hard enough that joe-sixpack won't learn how. And this doesn't block out opensource or small shareware authors... either group can get signing keys easily enough, and it should be relatively easy and inexpensive to get your signing key added to windows update. If its ever used for malware it just gets revoked by windows defender udpates or something once detected.
Used to be that my 1.5 Mb DSL line was just unbelievably fast. Now, 7 years later, it's routinely maxed out. I've upgraded my home network from 10 Mb to 100 Mb to 1 Gb. Part of my home network is still 100 Mb, and IT'S SLOW when I copy over an ISO image or do network backups...
I can't fill my gigabit lan. I'd love to know how you do! Because when I transfer a 6GB VMWare machine from server to the next it should take... what 48 seconds (6GB x 8 bits per byte = 48 gigabits) over gigabit + plus some link overhead.
Yet I average maybe 80 mbps. (10MB/s) using scp, or ftp. (and even slower if using Windows filesharing/samba)
I'm not certain where the 'bottle neck' is, but I'm not getting anywhere near 1000 mbps. Now I realize I'm using consumer chipsets, and my SATA hard drives will never sustain anywhere near even half 1000 megabits/s but I was hoping to see at least 160-200mbs+ (20-25 MB/s) after upgrading to gigabit. Even if i had a RAID at both ends, I can't imagine saturating a gigabit link.
What would the point of getting an even faster link? My files aren't going to move any faster. And if my 80mbps seems strangly low... let me know. I'd sort of assumed it was normal...
Linux isn't automatically more secure. Isn't it? So where are the equivalents to SELinux or AppArmor in Vista?
He said 'automatically'. SELinux and AppArmor aren't automatically installed. And in my experience they usually aren't.
Many Windows apps requires users to run as Administrator (for example Quickbooks and a camcorder tool I recently came across). On the Linux side, users can run as regular users and not know the root password (or have root access via sudo). Yes, I know that those are not part of Windows, but what does it matter, if the Windows ecosystem requires (or makes it very difficult to not) run as Adminstrator?
The windows ecosystem has to change. Period.
Venders aren't going to change their software without force.
Consumers aren't going to demand secure software unless it being insecure gets in their way (it wasn't before, but now it is).
IT shops SHOULD have been demanding secure software (and to their credit a lot of business software that runs in Terminal Services, Citrix, etc) is just fine in Vista because it was written properly to run in user space. (VERY FEW terminal server admins give everyone who logs in administrative privs. The appliations MUST run in user space, etc).
Unfortunately the demand for secure user space friendly software was largely limited to enterprise end-user apps accessed via terminal services. IT was was far to lenient with other stuff, and even business computers are often stuffed with software that needs admin priviledges for no good reason.
So faced with mounting problems with viruses and malware, and everyone demanding Windows get secure, microsoft secured windows. Good for them. May now the 3rd party vendors will finally fall into line... but its going to take some time.
So for my part, if somone is contemplating a new PC, and they want to go windows. I recommend Vista over XP provided it can be made to work. I want vendors to adjust to the new ecosystem, the last thing we need is to 'save XP' and perpetuate the old one.
serious, even critical flaw, but still not -that- bad. A short term workaround involves turning off the file sharing feature.
And really, if you are running vmware for high security and server isolation you would NEVER have that on anyway. Because the existence of a shared folder is implicitly not isolation.
And the value in vmware is not 'high security' but 'high utilisation'. The ability to run multiple low load systems on one hardware platform, while not having to worry about package dependency, compatibility, or even that they run on the same OS. And the ease at which you can move one virtualized 'server' to another hardware instance, and other server management conviences.
VMWare as a security mechanism? Its pretty good I suppose. In theory you can approach the same level of security you would have by using separate boxes for the servers. But that's it... you can only approach, you're never going to reach parity, and you certainly aren't going to exceed it.
So VMWare is a security tradeoff... you trade a bit of security for better cash, space, and cpu utilisation.
That said, VMware security is quite good. Its a much smaller attack surface than, say, a chroot jail. But there is still an attack surface. If you want the highest possible security, dedicated hardware behind a firewall is, was, and probably always will be the best solution.
In closing, I'm sure we'll see a proper fix for this in short order.
All in all, it will allow ppl like craig, or haggard, to get their jollies and not be technically cheating.
Knowing they are really just masturbating with a sex doll that will be enough to turn most people off the whole idea. If the expense hasn't.
Sure it might do well as a novelty in Vegas as another entertainment diversion, but as a substitution for prostitutes or even just casual promiscuity/infidelity? I'm unconvinced.
After all, it is not sex, it is masturbating with a sex toy. In fact, this will probably help prevent much of our slave trade that occurs ALL over the world, even here in the west. Probably 80-90% of all slavery is about sex.
Precisely, its not sex and that's how most of us will feel about it. So if we want real sex, this doesn't deliver the emotional/mental/cerebral satisfaction. Sure we might get off, but that's probably not really the issue.
People have been able to 'pretend' they were cheating, 'pretend' they had a sex slave, 'pretend' a lot of stuff... but that hasn't diminished the demand for the 'real thing'.
Imagine a means to all but stop child molesting, by allowing these perves to molest a robot child.
I think this would backfire. I think even you realize that.
Also consider this: the ability for 18 year old prostitutes to dress up and pretend to be 14 year old schoolgirls hasn't eradicated child molestation of actual 14 year old girls; so I'm skeptical that even contemplating a reduction in child molestation is warranted.
Relatively few people will drop thousands of dollars on a glorified vibrator. I'm sure if it fit in the dresser when not in use, and retailed for under $49.00 it would sell extremely well... but that's not exactly in the forseeable future.
How many people are going to shell out enough money to buy a half decent car in order to masturbate?
War will become this "why worry? its only robots" thing, and so war won't be as feared as before.
Why would I send my robots against your robots in an open field?
I'd send them to destroy your cities, kill your civilians, families, children. I'm not going to convince your robots to surrender or leave, so I'm going to have to convince you that its not worth sending them in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
That Marsden chick is nuts. I went to high school with her, and I was attending university at SFU at the same time her 'sex harrassment scandal' and got to see that unfold up close. We weren't in the same circle, but . "Nuts" doesn't really begin to cover it. Vindictive, manipulative, self-centered, detached from reality, borderline sociopathic ... I could go on.
I hadn't realized she'd become something of a minor celebrity since then. I'd had her pegged as ending up a bitter cat-person writing angry columns. I guess she managed to make a career out of that. Wikipedia mentions she ended up with Bill O'Reilly on Fox for a number of years... Figures. Crazy attracts crazy. And even THEY fired her.
If Jimmy Wales was keeping company with her... well... no wonder the breakup was bizarre enough to become newsworthy. As to charges of corruption... well.. you can learn something about a person by the company they keep. My assessment of Wales credibility is pretty low right now.
Any other opinions on managed code out there? Preferably from people who have actually used it?
Managed is like Java, only with more language syntax options, because it supports multiple languages.
Your "microsoft employed friend" sounds like he's just been taken out of context. After all sure there are places where managed or java doesn't belong, and sure its possible MS tried to use it in places they shouldn't have, and that would be a 'Mistake'.
But hanging onto managed for 'VBers' is just absurd. Java is -very- enterprise and 'big development places' friendly, and so is managed code. I'm not sure why anyone would claim otherwise.
Mod parent awesome.
:)
Not only did he invoke one of the slashdot holy wars to complete his trifecta, but managed to quietly work in an IP controversy by referencing scrabble/scrabulous which itself is just the result of the buzz surrounding an app on a social networking site like facebook/myspace thereby completing a circular reference and ending up exactly where we started.
At the very least he should get 50 bonus points for using all his letters!
(And if you look closely, so did I.)
It's almost like we're kind of pissed at the Castro family for encouraging the Soviet Union to launch those nuclear missiles he had on his island.
Yes, its almost like we're immature children who spitefully cling to their hatred long after the conflict is over and everyone else has grown up and gotten over it.
Hell, we've even made peace with the country that actually designed, built, and deployed the missles to cuba. You know, the country that actually owned them and put them their with the express purpose of creating a threat? The country that the 'cold war' was actually with? We made peace with them. But apparently our rage for a dying old man whose island they were on... for him... our hatred is boundless.
Grow up aready.
Yes, -1 Not conforming with majority opinion
No. -1 for being an immature and childish country.
You know, because of that whole trying to murder tens of millions of us and all.
You might want to check your history. The Soviets put missiles in Cuba in response to the fact that the USA put missiles in Turkey. Not that it stops their of course, the cold war was a series of moves and responses, but the point remains... Castro was a PAWN in a much bigger game of chess [er... global thermonuclear war] and his role and personal relevance was laughably minor.
Eventually, nanobots will be everywhere, including inside your own body scanning your thoughts - thoughts which by then will already be pugged directly into the Internet or whatever its future incarnation happens to be called.
My nanobots will be defending my thoughts from outside bots, and manufacturing records of thoughts you didn't even have to feed into the internet to later convict you with.
There will also be no crime (without getting caught), no criminal trials, or even any lying without getting caught for ordinary people.
Smug self assurance and 100% reliance on the infallibility of technology.
Sounds like a criminals/hackers utopia actually.
As you clearly couldnt be botherd to check if your point has been made already, it has. The point of the article is that AFAIK microsoft have provided no way to avoid compromise, but unix systems can be secured
So, going into device manager, locating the firewire port, and disabling it, doesn't actually work in windows?
Disable the port when you aren't using it, enable it when you are. You don't even need to reboot in modern releases of windows.
Yeah, and oxygen is what leads to old age and ultimately 'so called' natural death. So breath less. Breath slower. You only have so many. Make them last. ;)
Why are these still being produced, when the "mobile" variants of the same models are much more efficient?
The T7250 appears to be about twice the price of the E4400.
I can get an E4400 for 129.00. Best I could find on a T7250 was 262.50
Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.
Yeah, lets all bow down at the alter of google. They'll just force us to view ads while data mining our conversations and text messages. I'd sure like to get in on that.
Seriously who needs a VGA, [...] port on their laptop nowadays?
Most people?
Connecting to large screens or projectors is a pretty common use for laptops.
Sure from a technical standpoint, I'd prefer DVI, with adapters to VGA, but VGA is probably more convenient. Most projectors I encounter are still VGA, as are a lot of budget screens, and the expensive ones at least support VGA too.
So for an ultra portable do I want the technically better DVI and the hassle of adapters everywhere I go... or just put up with the the lower quality of VGA but at least it works everywehre without carrying additional bits everywhere I go?
Tough call. I can see the argument for VGA.
Yes, but special purpose hardware is presumed to be more efficient a given task than a general purpose CPU, and being more efficient means bringing the amount of power to get it done down.
2002 called and wants its windows gripes back. There are plenty of fresh gripes if you want them. ;)
In vista the recycling bin along with the other 'special desktop icons' is a simple checkbox in the 'Change Desktop Icons' task in the 'Personalize' control panel.
Part of it is that the vast majority of software that seems like it requires admin access can be trivially fixed with an hour of sleuthing with ProcessMonitor/Regmon/Filemon and some group policy registry or ntfs acl changes. Some that use low level drive software for their normal processing this wont work for. But it will for most. Thats how we've always dealt with it over the years.
Agreed. But...
a) that's a lot of work, especially if the applications are updated frequently, and each new release seems to creates a new registry key where it really shouldn't be. Plus a number of badly written applications essentially reinstall themselves each time they are run which is particularly annoying.
b) that's way out of reach for home users.
With Vista out, going forward IT shops are spared this ordeal, and home users can reap the security benefits of being able to run as as regular user (and indeed being setup that way out of the box without taking extra effort).
All that being said, I really do like Vista and its UAC. It's not as elegantly done as sudo and the gui equivalent in the unices and osx, but its soooooo much better than XP was, that I find it a breath of fresh air.
Agreed. There are a few issues with UAC, but you can work around them... modifying config files in the program files or windows directory is annoying; it would be nice to just have to escalate once. And going into device manager shouldn't require escalation if you just need 'read only' access. But those are relatively minor issues.
Bill Gates better get a new titanium ring. All the ring kissing required to run your Apps on Windows is going to require a durable one on his finger. ... Please, oh please, Mr. Bill, can I run ** on my computer???
Huh? What are you on about? Re-read my post. A couple times.
The owner of the computer would ALWAYS be able to sign, *any* application regardless of source, and it would run on any computer that trusted the owners key. (ie the PCs the owner owner owned. The owner would also be able to add *any* key he likes, so if you trust the applications I write, you can add my key to your computers. "Mr Bill" wouldn't be able to stop you from running jack squat under the regime I'm proposing.
The whole windows update key distribution idea is just a convenience so that most users don't have to mess with keys to download legitimate apps. It doesn't have to be microsoft update, there could even be third party key repositories, and if you assign trust to them, you get access to all the apps they've signed without messing with individual keys for each application or vendor. e.g. Sun or the Mozilla foundation or whatever could run their own key servers, and FOSS could register with them instead of microsoft if they wanted. End users could take the single step of adding trust to that keyserver.
You could even sign windows yourself, and then revoke the microsoft key on your own systems, thereby removing trust for microsoft. Your PC then wouldn't even run additional Microsoft software unless you signed off on it. So not only could "Mr. Bill" not prevent you from running whatever you want, but he couldn't even force your PC to trust software you didn't want it to trust.
Product Activation extended beyond the core OS and into each App as it is installed.
This isn't product "activation" at all. Its the complete opposite. You aren't entering a key so that the vender will allow their software to run on your computer. You'd be entering a key to PERMIT the venders software to run on YOUR computer. You can trust just the one application, or trust the vender, or trust a keyserver the vender is registered with, depending on how security you want, and/or how fine a control over what might run on your pc you want.
We're already there. And have been with XP for years.
All it takes is: the systems are patched promptly, the users run as non-admin, and dont use IE.
Which is unrealistic given how much software out there REQUIRES you to run as an admin. Sure a fairly wide range of business/enterprise applications will work like this. But a giant shit-ton of software still remains that won't run in user-space... from many games, to software for moving phonebooks between different brand cellphones and doing firmware updates, to a camcorder utility, to a consumer accounting package, etc, etc.
How does one manage to run as non-admin if the software you need to run requires admin, and the venders are largely unmotivated to fix it since it isn't stuff that gets run on terminal servers or deployed in enterprise networks so there isn't a huge push to make it work in userland?
Vista forces the issue. Vista is more secure by default. Going forward venders won't realease much new software that's going to needlessly require admin access given that all customers will now find it a royal hassle to use.
Sure we have been able to run as a non-admin user for years, as long we didn't do much with our computers. Vista's forcing us into user land holds the promise that maybe we'll finally be able to run as non-admins AND use our camcorder software, do our accounting, etc, etc, etc.
Enough of that. Apple just doesn't make applications very well. They put all the resources into the UI, and skimp on the important stuff.
I can fix an application that runs slow and uses lots of ram with ram and cpu upgrades. I'm generally stuck with the UI though, so please, focus your resources there. It really is more important than you seem to think.
However, most people in this thread seem to be overlooking that the weakest link in computer security is not in hardware or software, but bioware. (The idiot sitting at the keyboard.)
;)
Not overlooking it. Ignoring it because there isn't any disagreement on that point.
And now the Vista is out, I can only *hope* that dumb users is Vista's biggest source of security problems. Because if Vista can get good enough that self-replicating viruses, malware, and root kits, can only be installed / propogated by affirmative user action then its about as good as OSX or Linux, and that would be excellent progress.
And at the end of the day, there is -nothing- anyone can do to stop users from running something they shouldn't on their own computers except for "trusted computing", with 'trusted vendors' signing the packages the users are allowed to run. (And even that won't be 100% safe as the keys can be broken...) And we all know how popular Trusted Computing is around here.
That said, personally I LOVE the promise of trusted computing. But I want my own signing key, and to be able to add my signing key as trusted on machines I admin, and remove keys i don't trust even if they are from "reputable" venders. ie... the owner of the computer still has final say on what runs or doesn't run. Of course this undermines what the RIAA/MPAA wants 'trusted computing' and signing keys for, but that's a separate issue.
Joe six-pack can let microsoft update manage his keys, and for the most part, do alright, with more security than he has now. While the power users like me can still use TC to do whatever we want with our computers, and up the level of security considerably at the same time. If a user tries to install malware on my machine they can't, unless I sign it, or its signed by someone/company I trust.
Of course, signing an application and/or adding a key should be just hard enough that joe-sixpack won't learn how. And this doesn't block out opensource or small shareware authors... either group can get signing keys easily enough, and it should be relatively easy and inexpensive to get your signing key added to windows update. If its ever used for malware it just gets revoked by windows defender udpates or something once detected.
Anyhow i'm rambling off topic...
Ping flood the broadcast IP address.
;)
I'm sorry, I meant useful uses for a faster link. I guess I should have specified.
Used to be that my 1.5 Mb DSL line was just unbelievably fast. Now, 7 years later, it's routinely maxed out. I've upgraded my home network from 10 Mb to 100 Mb to 1 Gb. Part of my home network is still 100 Mb, and IT'S SLOW when I copy over an ISO image or do network backups...
... let me know. I'd sort of assumed it was normal...
I can't fill my gigabit lan. I'd love to know how you do! Because when I transfer a 6GB VMWare machine from server to the next it should take... what 48 seconds (6GB x 8 bits per byte = 48 gigabits) over gigabit + plus some link overhead.
Yet I average maybe 80 mbps. (10MB/s) using scp, or ftp. (and even slower if using Windows filesharing/samba)
I'm not certain where the 'bottle neck' is, but I'm not getting anywhere near 1000 mbps. Now I realize I'm using consumer chipsets, and my SATA hard drives will never sustain anywhere near even half 1000 megabits/s but I was hoping to see at least 160-200mbs+ (20-25 MB/s) after upgrading to gigabit. Even if i had a RAID at both ends, I can't imagine saturating a gigabit link.
What would the point of getting an even faster link? My files aren't going to move any faster. And if my 80mbps seems strangly low
cheers.
Linux isn't automatically more secure.
Isn't it? So where are the equivalents to SELinux or AppArmor in Vista?
He said 'automatically'. SELinux and AppArmor aren't automatically installed. And in my experience they usually aren't.
Many Windows apps requires users to run as Administrator (for example Quickbooks and a camcorder tool I recently came across). On the Linux side, users can run as regular users and not know the root password (or have root access via sudo). Yes, I know that those are not part of Windows, but what does it matter, if the Windows ecosystem requires (or makes it very difficult to not) run as Adminstrator?
The windows ecosystem has to change. Period.
Venders aren't going to change their software without force.
Consumers aren't going to demand secure software unless it being insecure gets in their way (it wasn't before, but now it is).
IT shops SHOULD have been demanding secure software (and to their credit a lot of business software that runs in Terminal Services, Citrix, etc) is just fine in Vista because it was written properly to run in user space. (VERY FEW terminal server admins give everyone who logs in administrative privs. The appliations MUST run in user space, etc).
Unfortunately the demand for secure user space friendly software was largely limited to enterprise end-user apps accessed via terminal services. IT was was far to lenient with other stuff, and even business computers are often stuffed with software that needs admin priviledges for no good reason.
So faced with mounting problems with viruses and malware, and everyone demanding Windows get secure, microsoft secured windows. Good for them. May now the 3rd party vendors will finally fall into line... but its going to take some time.
So for my part, if somone is contemplating a new PC, and they want to go windows. I recommend Vista over XP provided it can be made to work. I want vendors to adjust to the new ecosystem, the last thing we need is to 'save XP' and perpetuate the old one.
serious, even critical flaw, but still not -that- bad. A short term workaround involves turning off the file sharing feature.
And really, if you are running vmware for high security and server isolation you would NEVER have that on anyway. Because the existence of a shared folder is implicitly not isolation.
And the value in vmware is not 'high security' but 'high utilisation'. The ability to run multiple low load systems on one hardware platform, while not having to worry about package dependency, compatibility, or even that they run on the same OS. And the ease at which you can move one virtualized 'server' to another hardware instance, and other server management conviences.
VMWare as a security mechanism? Its pretty good I suppose. In theory you can approach the same level of security you would have by using separate boxes for the servers. But that's it... you can only approach, you're never going to reach parity, and you certainly aren't going to exceed it.
So VMWare is a security tradeoff... you trade a bit of security for better cash, space, and cpu utilisation.
That said, VMware security is quite good. Its a much smaller attack surface than, say, a chroot jail. But there is still an attack surface. If you want the highest possible security, dedicated hardware behind a firewall is, was, and probably always will be the best solution.
In closing, I'm sure we'll see a proper fix for this in short order.
All in all, it will allow ppl like craig, or haggard, to get their jollies and not be technically cheating.
Knowing they are really just masturbating with a sex doll that will be enough to turn most people off the whole idea. If the expense hasn't.
Sure it might do well as a novelty in Vegas as another entertainment diversion, but as a substitution for prostitutes or even just casual promiscuity/infidelity? I'm unconvinced.
After all, it is not sex, it is masturbating with a sex toy. In fact, this will probably help prevent much of our slave trade that occurs ALL over the world, even here in the west. Probably 80-90% of all slavery is about sex.
Precisely, its not sex and that's how most of us will feel about it. So if we want real sex, this doesn't deliver the emotional/mental/cerebral satisfaction. Sure we might get off, but that's probably not really the issue.
People have been able to 'pretend' they were cheating, 'pretend' they had a sex slave, 'pretend' a lot of stuff... but that hasn't diminished the demand for the 'real thing'.
Imagine a means to all but stop child molesting, by allowing these perves to molest a robot child.
I think this would backfire. I think even you realize that.
Also consider this: the ability for 18 year old prostitutes to dress up and pretend to be 14 year old schoolgirls hasn't eradicated child molestation of actual 14 year old girls; so I'm skeptical that even contemplating a reduction in child molestation is warranted.
I think it was 'not many people would shell out for one'. And I stand by that.
;)
How many do you think they actually sell?
It certainly hasn't been enough to displace prostitutes, or even cheap blow up dolls; nevermind led to the fall of civilisation as we know it.
Relatively few people will drop thousands of dollars on a glorified vibrator. I'm sure if it fit in the dresser when not in use, and retailed for under $49.00 it would sell extremely well... but that's not exactly in the forseeable future.
How many people are going to shell out enough money to buy a half decent car in order to masturbate?
War will become this "why worry? its only robots" thing, and so war won't be as feared as before.
Why would I send my robots against your robots in an open field?
I'd send them to destroy your cities, kill your civilians, families, children. I'm not going to convince your robots to surrender or leave, so I'm going to have to convince you that its not worth sending them in the first place.